


Dancing in the Dark

by Mohini



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Caregiving, Don't Ask Don't Tell, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, M/M, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-03 17:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12151812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mohini/pseuds/Mohini
Summary: Twenty years they’ve known each other. For the last ten, they’ve danced around what they mean to each other. With James out of the service, away from the toxic Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell environment, the natural thing to do would have been to give in to what they’ve both known good and well for a long time. Turns out, they're not so good at doing what should be natural.





	Dancing in the Dark

“Should someone cut him off at some point?” Steve asks Sam, inclining his head toward James at the bar. He’s slamming back yet another shot of something and Steve’s almost certain that he’s well into double digit territory now.

“Not a good idea,” Sam replies smoothly as James comes towards them. 

His eyes are glassy but he smiles at them as he distributes the beers he picked up for them while he was knocking down more liquor. The man is sex on legs in tight jeans, a fitted Henley, and the tiniest hint of liner around his eyes. “Wanna dance?” he asks Steve before taking him by the hand and leading him towards the floor. 

~~~

Two hours later, Steve’s in the apartment he shares with Bucky, Sam, and Nat. James is barely capable of hauling himself up the stairs under his own power and Steve is shocked he’s still conscious. Nat’s still out somewhere, and probably won’t return until dawn. Sam went home with some twink, which leaves Steve with a very, very wasted James who is currently doing everything in his power to convince Steve that he’s capable of sex, despite all evidence to the contrary.

“Y’know, I betcha’d do me if I wasn’t scarred to hell,” James slurs as Steve removes his hand from his waistband for the thousandth time on their way through the common area. It’s the first time Steve has ever heard James mention the burns on his upper arm and shoulder. He’s only rarely seen them despite them sharing a room, mostly when James is on his way from the shower to the bedroom and even then he tends to dress in the bathroom more often than not.

“I don’t care about the scars,” Steve tells him, his voice deliberately calm. It’s most definitely not the right thing to say.

“Yeah, yeah, no one cares about em. Went to fucking war for no good fucking reason but no one goddamn gives a flying fuck about it,” James growls. “Fuck. Fucking ugly as hell. Fuck,” he mutters and his voice breaks on the edge of a sob. Steve wraps his arms around him, certain that it’s not just the scars he’s talking about now.

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” Steve whispers, easing them both to the floor with the other man’s knees buckle. 

James is shaking now, and Steve tugs him close, holding him tight and repeating what reassurance he can in hopes that some of it making it through the alcohol haze. “I’ve got you, shhh, shhh, you’re okay, you’re okay,” Steve keeps telling him, even as James is sobbing in alcohol fueled hysteria. He’s known him since they were too young to shave, and he knows exactly how James was treated for any hint of emotion that wasn’t anger by his father. He’s never seen James cry sober, but this kind of breakdown is exceptional even for him. 

It seems to take forever before the man in his arms begins to calm. The sobs edge slowly into quieter tears, and eventually stop altogether. “Stevie?” James asks, his voice raw.

“Right here, it’s all good,” Steve replies automatically. 

“I don’t feel so good,” James tells him. 

“Think you can walk?” Steve asks. 

“Help me?”

“Always,” Steve tells him, pulling them both to their feet and tossing one of James’ arms across his shoulders to haul him to the bathroom. James has a hand clamped over his mouth and is fighting back heaves by the time they cross the threshold. 

Steve crouches next to him as he holds the edges of the toilet and unloads what sounds like a truly unfortunate amount of liquor. When he’s down to heaves, Steve rubs his back in slow circles, quietly talking to him reminding him to breathe, that it’s okay, that he’s not alone. It takes a while to wind down, but once it does he lets himself collapse against Steve. 

Steve reaches forward to flush away the mess as James slides down his chest and into his lap, head coming to rest on Steve’s thigh, one hand clutching the fabric of his shirt and the other splayed across James’ stomach. 

Steve runs his fingers through the close cropped dark hair as James cries quietly in his lap. “Shhh, Bucky, shhh, I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” Steve tells him, reverting to the name James discarded before he shipped out to war. 

“Gonna puke,” James whimpers, and Steve pulls him upright a second too late. James clutches the toilet as he keeps bringing up more, even as the liquid cools and soaks into his and Steve’s clothes. Steve shucks out of his foul jeans before shedding his shirt and reaching forward to ease the Henley off of James. It’s the first time he’s seen the scarring up close, and he has to admit it’s awful. The skin is pitted and shiny, the grafted areas raw looking even a year after the mission James was on got blown to bits on the side of some road in a place Steve can barely pronounce. 

“M’sorry,” James keeps muttering, and Steve reaches around him to undo the fly of his pants as well. 

“You have nothing to apologize for here, you’ve held my head plenty of times. Let’s get you out of these, alright? You’ll feel better.”

“Not likely,” James replies, though he manages to shimmy out of the jeans by some miracle. Steve helps him out of his boxers as well, soaked through with vomit and, if the smell is anything to go by, not a small amount of piss. 

“Think you can stay conscious long enough for a shower?”

“Bath?” he asks, and the haunted sadness in his eyes is enough to make Steve want to kill anything and everything that took his snarky, carefree friend and made this wreck out of him. 

“Sure,” Steve tells him, turning the taps and helping him step into the tub and sit down. Steve coaxes him to sit close to the faucet, cupping his hands under the water and rinsing the grime from James’ body. He dampens a cloth and rubs a bar of soap across it, gently washing his friend and speaking softly the entire time, trying to keep James awake and alert. 

“I’m going to turn on the shower for a minute, get your hair clean for you,” he tells him once he is finished washing his body. James nods, and sits in silence as he rinses him, washes his hair, and rinses the shampoo from it. He helps him from the tub, wrapping him in a towel and settling him against the wall before stepping into the bath himself for a shower that takes all of three minutes time. When he steps out, James has passed out cold on the floor of the bathroom. 

It’s not the first time he’s carried him to bed. He doubts it will be the last. James could hold his liquor better than most before he left. Now that he’s back, he seems to have forgotten where the line between drunk and wasted lies. No one has the guts to say the words, but they all know this goes well beyond hard partying and firmly in to straight up alcoholism. 

He wakes to James stumbling from the bed and into the bathroom, strangled retching filling the early morning silence. He goes to him, rubbing his back and offering him water to rinse his mouth. When he’s finished, he grabs a bottle of mouthwash and passes it over, instructing him to rinse his mouth. James takes it and does as he asks. “I’m sorry, Stevie. M’such a fuckup.”

“Nah, you’re just hurting. It’ll be alright. I’ve got you.”

“M’always hurting, Stevie,” James whispers. Steve’s not at all certain he was meant to hear the words, but he wraps his hand around Bucky’s shoulder and tugs him toward him. 

“You’ve got to let me help you,” Steve says quietly. “Please just let me in. I hate watching you hurt yourself like this. Please, baby, just let me try.”

“Not worth it,” James murmurs.

“Worth it to me,” Steve tells him. 

“M’sorry,” James repeats.

Steve can feel him trembling in his arms. As much as he longs to take this vulnerability and dig deeper, force James to talk to him about whatever is driving this self destructive train wreck, he knows it would backfire in horrible ways. “Shhh, I’ve got you,” he says instead, holding him close and waiting out the shaking, politely ignoring the dampness of tears soaking into the thin jersey fabric of his shirt. 

When James pulls away to sit up on his own, his eyes are red and puffy, his face pale and exhausted. “Stevie?” he asks so quietly Steve has to strain to hear him.

“Not going anywhere,” Steve replies.

“I don’t know how to do this anymore, Stevie. M’so tired. Of all of it.”

“Lemme get you off this floor, we’ll talk, figure out what we need to do,” Steve tells him, and James nods his agreement. It’s easier than it should be, to lift him from the floor. He’s lost weight again, not that he’s skinny by any means, but he’s definitely not as solid as he was even a few weeks ago. He follows meek as a kitten to their room and curls up in a ball on the bed. Steve wraps himself around him, and holds him close while James sniffles and shakes, letting what feels like a lifetime of hurt out in shuddering gasps. He can’t talk, can’t even try, but he presses himself as close to Steve as he can get and cries himself to sleep. 

Steve stays with him all morning and well into midday. Tasha comes in to check on them near noon, shakes her head at James’ still form in his arms and brings a protein drink with a straw popped through the seal for him to drink while she holds it for him, allowing him to keep a grip on James without being an unholy kind of hungry. She brings a bottle of electrolyte drink as well, placing it on the nightstand before slipping back out of the room. 

It’s well into late afternoon when James wakes again, blinking up at Steve and watching his face in that hypervigilant way of his, scanning for any potential threat. “Hey there,” Steve tells him, hand automatically moving to rub small, soothing circles between James’ shoulders. “How’re you feeling?”

“Tired,” James replies flatly. “I’m sorry, Stevie. You shouldn’t have to babysit me like this.”

“My choice,” Steve counters. “You shouldn’t have to deal with whatever the hell this is on your own. Wanna tell me what’s going on in that head of yours?”

“I swear I’d explain it if I could,” James tells him. 

“Try anyway,” Steve shoots back.

“I’m broken. My brain’s fucked to hell, Stevie. It’s like it’s going too fast for me to make sense out of anything and everything changed while I was gone and nothing works the way it was supposed to and I can’t make me fit anymore.” The words come out in a rush and Steve wonders just how long James has been trying to find a way to say it without being able to. 

“That why you’re drinking your way to an early grave?” Steve asks him.

“Mostly. Yeah. I don’t know. It helps, for a little while. Slows shit down enough, then it just makes it worse and I just, I want it to stop, Stevie, I’m so tired. I’m just so fucking tired.”

“At the risk of sounding like a Lifetime Movie, you trying to tell me you’re suicidal here, Buck?”

“Jesus, no. Fuck, if I wanted to die I’d eat my gun.” Something in the matter of fact way he says it makes it hard for Steve to breathe. He knows James has a Glock in the closet, knows that it’s in a locked case because Nat insisted. He’s suddenly immeasurably grateful that Nat also insisted on the key being in her possession. 

“Alright. Not actively going for offing yourself, then. What the hell are you doing? Cause from where I’m standing, you’re scaring the fuck out of me. You barely eat, you cry in your sleep, you’re drinking more than the rest of us put together, hell, I don’t even think Nat can keep up with you anymore. I don’t remember the last time we went out and you didn’t drink yourself sick.”

“I’m sorry,” James mumbles.

“Stop apologizing. That’s not what I need from you, Buck. Tell me what to do. Please. I can’t keep watching you self destruct.”

“Please don’t leave me,” James whispers and his eyes are too bright, his teeth digging into his bottom lip as his chin begins to quiver. Twenty years they’ve known each other. For the last ten, they’ve danced around what they mean to each other. With James out of the service, away from the toxic Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell environment, the natural thing to do would have been to give in to what they’ve both known good and well for a long time. Instead, it’s been relegated to James’ drunken antics, to Steve caring for him when he’s too far gone to know who he is. Those barely voiced words, with James clinging to him as he holds tightly to the last threads of control, bring the dance to a screeching halt.

“Bucky,” Steve whispers, pulling him close. “I’m never leaving you, Buck. I love you, all of you,” he assures him. 

James drags in a shaky breath and Steve holds him as tightly as he dares, whispering to him that he’s got him. James lets out of a noise that is barely human, shaking his head even as he buries his face deeper against Steve’s body.

“Breathe, Buck, you’ve gotta breathe,” Steve tells him gently, and James wheezes another breath in and out before he’s gritting his teeth and holding his breath again. “Come on, Buck, in and out, nice and slow for me. I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart, I’ve got you. You’re safe, Buck. You’re safe,” Steve keeps up a litany of murmured attempts at comfort. James gasps in occasional breaths, his body shaking so hard he’s practically vibrating as he whines an endless, mournful sound. Steve’s not sure if he’s glad James is finally letting his guard down or deeply disturbed that it’s gotten this bad. 

When the tension finally goes out of his body, James’ breathing slows to a cadence that Steve is fairly certain is sleep. Cradling him against his chest, he gently eases them both onto the mattress, stretching out on his back with James held close and safe. Night comes, deepening the shadows in the room and dragging Steve into an uneasy sleep of his own. He’s hyperaware of the man in his arms, of the tiny whimpers that escape even in rest. When morning brings sunlight through the windows once more, they stare at each other in silence, neither sure where they stand now. 

Steve decides that he’s been edging around this too long, and leans in to bring his lips to James’ in a soft kiss. “Morning,” he tells him. James nods, watching him, but the lines of tension in his face ease and Steve is finally, finally certain that his Bucky is still in there somewhere.


End file.
